Zeitgeist

Just finished: Genocide Bad: Notes on Palestine, Jewish History, and Collective Liberation by Sim Kern. I don't really have much to add—I'd highly recommend this one, whether you just learned about Palestine two years ago or you've been in the movement for decades. It's well-written, empathetic, and clear-eyed. My only critique is the bit at the end, which is an anarchist vision of a future liberated Palestine and Israel. It's not that I disagree politically, but I'm not sure it needs to be as long as it is, and they have the same issue as Starhawk when it comes to gardening on highways (why would you do this). I think it might turn off people who are not already anarchists, and beyond that, it feels like the kind of vision that everyday Palestinians and Israelis wouldn't necessarily share or relate to. But the core of the book is so good that I'm not terribly bothered by it.

Ten Incarnations of Rebellion by Vaishnavi Patel. You know how most alternate histories are about things like "what if the Nazis won WWII?" or "what if the Confederates won the American Civil War?" (how would you be able to tell in the Year Of Our Lord 2025???). What if someone wrote an alternate history that was actually...creative? This is about an alternate India where British colonialism continued into the 60s and 70s. All of the leaders of the independence movement are dead, most of the young men are off at war with China, and Kalki, the daughter of a disappeared revolutionary, dreams of standing up to the British. Together with her college friends, Fauzia, who's Muslim, and Yashu, who's Dalit, she reforms a cell of the Indian Liberation Movement in Mumbai (known as Kingston).

One of my issues with alternate histories is I often wonder what the point of them is. They'll tend to posit our dystopian reality, one in which fascism is ascendant, the climate crisis is raging, and surveillance capitalism owns the most intimate parts of our lives, as the best possible outcome, because isn't that better than the Nazis winning? This book has a point. It uses the failure of the original independence movement to show how resistance movements can grow after a crushing defeat.

Anyway, I loved it. ( spoilers )

Currently reading: Girls Against God, Jenny Hval. At least one of you read this awhile back and I was like, ooh, I must read that, and I finally started. I haven't gotten far in yet—so far it's a teenage girl ranting about how Norway sucks and black metal rules. Which I can get behind, but given the blurb, I hope it's going somewhere. It does very much have an authentic teenage voice but I deal with authentic teenage voices for a living.